An addictive environment: New Zealand film production workers’ subjective experiences of project-based labour

Abstract

This article uses the theoretical framework provided by social models of addiction to interpret freelance film production workers’ subjective experiences of project-based labour. The article suggests that the structural conditions of project-based labour within the film industry create a subjective experience in which the financial, creative, social and emotional rewards of employment are interspersed with the anxieties of repeated unemployment. The stark contrast between highly gratifying periods in work and highly aversive periods in between work produces an addictive psycho-social dynamic that repeatedly draws freelance production workers back into the industry. This process can only be fully understood by considering the relationship between employment conditions and subjective experiences as an integrated whole. The development of freelance film production workers’ addictive relationships with the film industry is illustrated using qualitative data from in-depth interviews with 11 male and 10 female New Zealand freelance film production workers.